Ferienne is the third installment of an ongoing experimental study on fluid dynamics, magnetism and cymatics. These invisible forces of nature are then made visible through various liquids and mixtures, and they form patterns that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
Archive for the ‘Sonic/Musical’ Category
Jason Freeman – Composition, Imagination and Collaboration
May 23, 2012Jason Freeman is an Associate Professor of Music in the College of Architecture at Georgia Institute of Technology.
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Schematic as Score: Uses and Abuses of the (In)Deterministic Possibilities of Sound Technology
May 21, 2012
‘The only true wisdom lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and it can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone can open the mind of a man to all that is hidden to others.’ – Inuit shaman Najagneq, recorded by Knud Rasmussen1
‘If you want to build a modular, my advice is not to do it if you want to have any friends, it takes too much time.’ – Jessica Rylan2
Over the past few years, a strong reaction against the sterile world of laptop sound and video has inspired a new interest in analog processes, or “hands dirty” art in the words of practitioner John Richards3. With this renewed analog interest comes a fresh exploration of the pioneers of the electronic arts during the pre-digital era of the 1960s and 1970s. Artists and inventors such as Nam June Paik, Steina & Woody Vasulka, Don Buchla, Serge Tcherepnin, Dan Sandin and David Tudor all constructed their own unique instruments long before similar tools became commercially available or freely downloadable4– often through a long, rigorous process of self-education in electronics.
Text and Image via Vague Terrain
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Cultural Morphing: Klaus Filip / Nicolaj Kirisits / et al.
May 19, 2012
Statement:
Cultural Morphing is an experiment in creating a multi-perspective image of reality from the simultaneous experience of a geographic line by the individual expression of a perceived personal reality. Twelve invited artists traveled by train from Vienna to Shanghai, and selected stops along the route served as their workspace where they would meticulously work out an project that outlined various aspects of cultural transition experienced on the journey. Stopovers at Ulan-Ude, Ulan Bator, Beijing and Shanghai were used to exhibit the works that were created en route.
China emerged as the focus and destination for Cultural Morphing because of the mutual, cooperative, and also oppositional status of digital art between China and Europe. Europe and China are two antipodes in cultural history that have been in steady interchange, but have also developed differently and independently from each other. This cultural deviation is the starting point and the ultimate potential of our project. Adequate to the technology of morphing, the realization of the individual artworks will be a consummation of the artistic interpretations of many keyframes on the tracks between Vienna and Shanghai.
The broadcast for Radius will feature a score developed through filming a dinner at a Chinese rotating table. The images captured through filming from above the table during the course of the dinner were sonified with data and acoustic recordings collected along the journey. The artists involved created individual sound files based on a video score that were later combined into one stereo track.
Via Radius
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New “Dolphin Speaker” Produces Full Range of Dolphinese Sounds
May 17, 2012
Communication with dolphins is getting better all the time — they’ve been using iPads, for one thing, and humans have been working on a type of Rosetta Stone-like two-way translation device. A new gadget could improve matters even further, by allowing humans to produce the full range of dolphin sounds. The acoustics researchers who developed it call it the Dolphin Speaker.
Plenty of work is being done with dolphin sounds, but they have mostly focused on dolphin vocalizations and their hearing anatomy. Dolphins can not only hear and produce clicks, whistles and burst pulses well outside of the range of human hearing, but they can vocalize at several different frequency ranges at once. This ocean broadband is key for communication and navigation.
To better understand how these sounds are produced, how they travel and even what they mean, researchers need to be able to play them back, watching how dolphins react. This speaker can do it, producing sounds from 6 kHz to 170 kHz. While others have worked in the low-frequency ranges, this is the first type that can cover the whole spectrum.
Researchers led by Yuka Mishima, a graduate student at Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, built a new transducer sandwiched between pieces of acrylic to keep it safe from water. A quadruple piezoelectric panel can broadcast high-frequency sounds, and a single silver circle broadcasts low-frequency sounds, Mishima explains in a presentation about the research. They took it to the ocean and played some dolphin sounds, comparing the sound spectrograms with natural recorded spectrograms obtained from dolphins. The charts looked mighty similar, the researchers say.
The next step is to play back a whole sequence of dolphin noises to dolphins and watch what happens. The paper is being presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting this week.
Dolphin Speaker: The Dolphin Speaker is the first underwater setup that can project the full range of sounds made by dolphins, potentially opening a new avenue for communication with the animals. Mishima et al/Acoustical Society of America.
Text and Images via POPSCI
‘Dolphin Speaker’ to Enhance Study of Dolphin Vocalizations and Acoustics
Mimi Lopar: Substandard housing and low-resolution tales
May 14, 2012
“I’m so glad to see (and hear) that little Mimi Lopar finally released her music! She always was a nasty yet adorable myopic thing cycling her way through the favelas at all hours terrorizing and delighting residents with her peculiar, catchy songs. Legend has it if Mimi grants a hug or kiss, she leaves behind a tiny, gooey octagonal hole the recipient’s forehead. Aha – an inlet for her music.” — Panasia Alipia Athenaeum
Domus Mixtapes
May 3, 2012
Each month, the wonderful Domus Mixtape series brings together musicians, writers, artists and designers to create live sound-based portraits of cities around the world.
All text below comes from DOMUS MIXTAPE.
“For the first in our series of mixtapes on cities and their sounds, Domus travels to Mexico City, the sprawling Aztec metropolis that today is home to 20 million people. There, Daniel Perlin catches up with this month’s special guest, journalist and blogger Daniel Hernandez, to patch together an audible portrait of the Mexican capital’s underground music scene. The resulting mix is a mélange of Mexican cumbia, ska, rockabilly, hip-hop, tribal guarachero and white noise from the frenetic streets of the Distrito Federal. The mixtape includes tracks by Afrodita, Toy Selectah, Kumbia Queers, Sonido Sonoramico, Los Rebel Cats, Maldita Vecindad, as well as a segment by sound artist Rogelio Sosa and Hernandez reading an ode to the city’s noise from his upcoming book, Down and Delirious in Mexico City. Orale, chilangos!”
Tracklist
1. tepito-5may2010 – Daniel Goldaracena
2. Ni Negrita Si Baila – Sonido Sonoramico
3. Daniel Hernandez_1/Centro 11/27/10 – Daniel Hernandez and Daniel Perlin
4. El Obachere – (3Ball mix) – Erick Rincon & Alan Rosales
5. Quinto Patio Ska – Maldita Vecindad Y Los Hijos Del Quinto Patio
6. Daniel Hernandez_2/Centro 11/27/10 – Daniel Hernandez and Daniel Perlin
7. Chicalango – MC Luka
8. Rayo de Sol – Sonidero Nacional
9. GOTA (Hijo de la Cumbia Remix) – Sekreto feat Morenito de Fuego
10. Te quiero un chingo – Kumbia Queers
11. Daniel Hernandez_3/Centro 11/27/10 – Daniel Hernandez and Daniel Perlin
12. Chica Sensual – Sonido Espectral
13. No Hagas Caso A Tus Papas – Los Rebel Cats
13. Daniel Hernandez_4 – Daniel Hernandez
14. Vaiven No. 1 (Soundinstllation audio v2) – Rogelio Sosa
15. Daniel Hernandez_5/Centro 11/27/10 – Daniel Hernandez and Daniel Perlin
16. Welcome to the Witch House (†‡† Remix)/BESTIA (Toy Selectah Mex-More Remix ) – Mater Suspiria Vision/Helloseahorse
17. pasconcito (dj n-ron rico mix) – Afroditas
“Most Londoners will recognise that walking past four closed pubs on a Sunday lunchtime is a sure sign of impending apocalypse. So when I found myself walking through the antiseptic, empty, nerve-centre of banks and insurance brokers in London’s square mile one weekend, the sheer quantity of unlit supermarkets, shopping centres, clothes shops, cafes, salad bars and pubs was terrifying. The sound of this city was a deafening, noisy, silence.”
Tracklist
01 Softmain – Dream Crown
02 Scanner – Candles + Beatrice Galilee reading
03 We Are Grave – Permanent
04 Salwa Azar – Poseidon Sea
05 si-cut.db – Academic Hit
06 Scanner – Self Same Circuits
07 Bladzez Krome – Liquid
08 Neck Dust – Shrill
09 Brick Lane Buskers
10 Scanner – Night Haunts
“So let’s be clear. I am not from Rio de Janeiro. I am not a Carioca. Even after 18 years of coming and going, 5+ years lived and hours worked, partied, lost, found and wandered, I am not a Carioca. What I have is the serious problem so many gringos have. The idea of Rio has invaded me, left its mark, devoured me and consumed whatever thoughts and sounds resonate in my brain. “Tupi or not Tupi?” Goes the anthropohagic manifesto, and in writing, enunciating the multiplicity of times, spaces, sounds and feelings that is Rio. Rio, of course, does not exist, as no single city exists. It is instead a bricolage, defined geographically by divisions between its largely working-class Zona Norte, and its smaller, wealthier, iconic, Zona Sul. At first impression, its appearance from the ground is conflicted, agonistic, its favelas inescapable from view, requiring a double-consciousness and radical strategies of internal conflict negotiation. And now, annexing the often-gated zones of Barra de Tijuca, Jacaerepagua and on, any attempt to define a homogeneous sound of this city becomes even more remote, even more absurd.”
Tracklist
01. Natureza nº 1 em Mi Maior—Lucas Santtana
02. Eu Nasci Em Angola—Caxambu da Comunidade Sao Jose da Serra-
03. Dizem Que Sou Louco/Frogs, Pops, Rio, Nite —M.V. Bill
04. Orquestra Filarmônica da Favela—DJ Sany Pitbull
05. ta tomado (n-ron tamborclap riddim)—bonde nervoso
06. Alerte Limão—Chelpa Ferro
07. Pau de Arara. Baião de São Sebastião Baião—Luiz Gonzaga & Gonzaguinha
08. Crowd, Rio, Restaurant, Copa Cabana
09. Nao Foi Em Vão (Original Album Version)—Orquestra Imperial
10. Animais Sem Asas/papa capim—+2 Moreno, Domenico & Kassin, Meu Tambor—+2 Moreno, Domenico & Kassin
11. Fuego (Maga Bo Remix)—Bomba Estereo
12. Olha A Virada—Mocidade Independente, rap de felicidade accapella—Mcs Cidinho & Doca
13. Macumbinha/DJBR/toques para celular – abertura dos bailes funk
14. IDogBarks Constant 15. V.V.—B. Negão
16. Bells, Church, RioGloria Evening
17. embalaeu (N-RON and Reganomics mix)—Clementina de Jesus
18. rebichada (N-RON AMENMIX)—Chico Buarque e os trapalhões
19. Radio Samba—Nacão Zumbi
20. love banana—João Brasil
21. Shottas—Leo Justi
22. Angicos (paulo rafael mix)—Chico Science, Fred 04, Siba, Lucio Maia, Paulo Rafael
23. Crowd, Rio, Gávea
24. Vai Saudade—Velha Guarda da Portela
For Free Downloads and More Cities visit Domus Mixtapes
Medicine Cabinets by Damien Hirst
May 2, 2012
Bodies, 1989
No Feelings, 1989
I Wanna Be Me, 1990 – 1991
Each cabinet takes its name from one of the twelve title tracks of the legendary 1977 debut punk album “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”
Medicine Cabinets by Damien Hirst
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John Peel’s Record Collection
May 2, 2012
The contents of one of the most important and eclectic modern music collections in the world – John Peel’s personal record collection, is starting to be made public for the first time through an online archive.
John Peel’s family, The John Peel Centre for the Creative Arts, Eye Film and TV, and website company Klik, are working together to create an online archive of John Peel’s record collection, including specially created videos of key artists, John Peel’s home movies, John’s hand-typed note cards, and other content.
John Peel’s personal record collection consists of over 26,000 LPs, 40,000 singles and many thousands of CDs.
Text and Images via JOHN PEEL’S RECORD ARCHIVE
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Did Humans Invent Music?
May 1, 2012
Did Neanderthals sing? Is there a “music gene”? Two scientists debate whether our capacity to make and enjoy songs comes from biological evolution or from the advent of civilization.
Music is everywhere, but it remains an evolutionary enigma. In recent years, archaeologists have dug up prehistoric instruments, neuroscientists have uncovered brain areas that are involved in improvisation, and geneticists have identified genes that might help in the learning of music. Yet basic questions persist: Is music a deep biological adaptation in its own right, or is it a cultural invention based mostly on our other capacities for language, learning, and emotion? And if music is an adaptation, did it really evolve to promote mating success as Darwin thought, or other for benefits such as group cooperation or mother-infant bonding?
Excerpt of an article written by Gary Marcus and Geoffrey Miller, at The Atlantic. Continue HERE
Image above: A neanderthal instrument. A 40,000 year old flute at Divje Babe, Slovenia. Via Glen Morton.
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Post-Mubarak Storytelling: Al Jazeera’s short-doc on performance artist Abeer Soliman
April 28, 2012A political performance artist must adapt her life and work to fit the realities of post-revolution Egypt. Via Artscape
“Artscape gives expression to the creative forces behind many of the world’s headline stories. Across the globe people are using their voices, their imaginations and their visions to break down powerful barriers in their communities. From a small backroom theater challenging a despotic regime, to the courage of individuals finding a voice; from the ancient traditions of the written word, to the power of photography; from the joy of expressing identity through dance and song, to those easing the pain of migration through music – Artscape brings us the rich colors and clear cadences of popular expression.”
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Ryoji Ikeda: data.anatomy [civic]
April 26, 2012
data.anatomy [civic] is a new audiovisual installation by the acclaimed Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda, arising from a unique collaboration with Mitsuru Kariya, the development leader of the new Honda Civic.
Exhibited as a 3-screen video projection, data.anatomy [civic] immerses viewers in an intricate yet vast audiovisual composition derived from the entire data set of the car.
Via WE HEART
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The beauty of gravity….Tape Generations by Johan Rijpma
April 26, 2012
“Large groups of tape rolls go through a long process of development and degeneration. The extremely slow paced life of these objects is being revealed within an isolated space where everything starts from a symmetric composition. From this orderly state deviations and differences in behavior slowly become visible through the force of gravity. Resulting in unpredictable shapes and movements that somehow feel familiar.”
Tape Generations | 2011 | 2 min. 39 sec. | 4:3 |
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Unfinished Modernisations – Between Utopia and Pragmatism
April 25, 2012
Unfinished Modernisations is a collaborative, long-term research platform on architecture and urban planning. It brings together partners from both institutional and non-institutional sectors from South-Eastern Europe: TrajekT, (Slovenia), Umetnostna galerija Maribor (Maribor Art Gallery) (Slovenia), the Croatian Architects’ Society and the Institute for Contemporary Architecture, Zagreb (Croatia), the Belgrade Architects Society, Belgrade (Serbia) and the Coalition for Sustainable Development, Skopje, (Macedonia). The initiators and authors of the concept of the project are Vladimir Kulić and Maroje Mrduljaš.
The project is aimed at fostering interdisciplinary research on the production of built environment in its social, political and cultural contexts. It encompasses the countries that succeeded former Yugoslavia, spanning the period from the inception of the socialist state until today. The topic of the 14 researches is the way in which divergent concepts of modernization conditioned architecture, territorial transformations, and urban phenomena. The project seeks to detect effective, resilient, and socially responsible models of architecture and urban planning in socialist Yugoslavia and its successor states. Special attention is going to be paid to critical re-reading of modernization processes and contextualization of local architectural and urban planning concepts within the framework of international evolution of architectural discourse. While largely unexplored and lacking appropriate interpretation, many of the models created in the region were original and experimental and may be used as inspiration for a progressive current practice both inside and beyond the regional borders. The project also seeks to reconstruct an important segment of the shared history of Central and South-Eastern Europe and to strengthen cross-cultural respect and understanding through trans-national collaboration and mobility.
Unfinished Modernisations will be carried out through a variety of activities: 14 researches, 5 conferences (Zagreb, Skopje, Beograd, Split, Maribor), exhibitions, publications, and interactive web-site/blogs. All these efforts will culminate in a final exhibition in Maribor (Slovenia), the 2012 Cultural Capital of Europe, which will give the project broad European exposure.
Text and Image via Unfinished Modernisations
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Attention tunes the mind’s ear. Brain activity shows how one voice pattern stands out from the crowd
April 23, 2012The brain’s power to focus can make a single voice seem like the only sound in a room full of chatter, a new study shows. The results help explain how people can pick out a speaker from a jumbled stream of incoming sounds.
A deeper understanding of this feat could help scientists better treat people who can’t sort out sound signals effectively, an ability that can decline with age.
“I think this is a truly outstanding study, which has deep implications for the way we think about the auditory brain,” says auditory neuroscientist Christophe Micheyl of the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the new research.
Excerpt from an article written by Laura Sanders, Science News. Continue HERE
For the project, engineer Nima Mesgarani and neurosurgeon Edward Chang, both of the University of California, San Francisco, studied what happens in the brains of people who are trying to follow one of two talkers, a scenario known to scientists as the cocktail party problem.
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He is called Mick Jagger
April 14, 2012
In April of 1962, 18-year-old Keith Richards wrote the following enthusiastic letter to his aunt, “Patty,” and described, amongst other things, an encounter some months previous that would ultimately change his life — the moment he met Mick Jagger for the first time since being childhood friends.
Three months after the letter was written, “The Rollin’ Stones” played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London. The rest is history.
6 Spielman Rd
Dartford
Kent
Dear Pat,
So sorry not to have written before (I plead insane) in bluebottle voice. Exit right amid deafening applause.
I do hope you’re very well.
We have survived yet another glorious English Winter. I wonder which day Summer falls on this year?
Oh but my dear I have been soooo busy since Christmas beside working at school. You know I was keen on Chuck Berry and I thought I was the only fan for miles but one mornin’ on Dartford Stn. (that’s so I don’t have to write a long word like station) I was holding one of Chuck’s records when a guy I knew at primary school 7-11 yrs y’know came up to me. He’s got every record Chuck Berry ever made and all his mates have too, they are all rhythm and blues fans, real R&B I mean (not this Dinah Shore, Brook Benton crap) Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Chuck, Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker all the Chicago bluesmen real lowdown stuff, marvelous. Bo Diddley he’s another great.
Anyways the guy on the station, he is called Mick Jagger and all the chicks and the boys meet every Saturday morning in the ‘Carousel’ some juke-joint well one morning in Jan I was walking past and decided to look him up. Everybody’s all over me I get invited to about 10 parties. Beside that Mick is the greatest R&B singer this side of the Atlantic and I don’t mean maybe. I play guitar (electric) Chuck style we got us a bass player and drummer and rhythm-guitar and we practice 2 or 3 nights a week. SWINGIN’.
Of course they’re all rolling in money and in massive detached houses, crazy, one’s even got a butler. I went round there with Mick (in the car of course Mick’s not mine of course) OH BOY ENGLISH IS IMPOSSIBLE.
“Can I get you anything, sir?”
“Vodka and lime, please”
“Certainly, sir”
I really felt like a lord, nearly asked for my coronet when I left.
Everything here is just fine.
I just can’t lay off Chuck Berry though, I recently got an LP of his straight from Chess Records Chicago cost me less than an English record.
Of course we’ve still got the old Lags here y’know Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and 2 new shockers Shane Fenton and Jora Leyton SUCH CRAP YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD. Except for that greaseball Sinatra ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Still I don’t get bored anymore. This Saturday I am going to an all night party.
“I looked at my watch
It was four-o-five
Man I didn’t know
If I was dead or alive”
Quote Chuck Berry
Reeling and a Rocking
12 galls of Beer Barrel of Cyder, 3 bottle Whiskey Wine. Her ma and pa gone away for the weekend I’ll twist myself till I drop (I’m glad to say).
The Saturday after Mick and I are taking 2 girls over to our favourite Rhythm & Blues club over in Ealing, Middlesex.
They got a guy on electric harmonica Cyril Davies fabulous always half drunk unshaven plays like a mad man, marvelous.
Well then I can’t think of anything else to bore you with, so I’ll sign off goodnight viewers
BIG GRIN
Luff
Keith xxxxx
Who else would write such bloody crap
Text and Image via Letters of Note
Photo above: Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards opening fan mail during the early days of the band, circa 1963. (Photo by Keystone Features/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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App helps fans pay their favorite artists based on listening habits
April 12, 2012
Pikup is a new platform that remunerates artists based on subscribers’ listening habits.
The UK startup is currently offering free software to Mac, iPhone and iPad users — although it intends to include other operating systems in the future. Once installed, it works in the background and keeps a private record of all media accessed by the user, creating a digital diary of music, video, podcast and e-book consumption held on Pikup’s servers. Those using the service can then pay a small monthly subscription to support the arts, with the twist being that their money will be split between the artists whose work they have been playing. Pikup analyses the collective listening and viewing habits of all of its users and allocates subscription funds appropriately. Media creators, meanwhile, will be able to create accounts in order to claim their income. Pikup also has plans to allow bands and filmmakers to have a say in regards to how much of the site’s funds goes to them and how much is used to monetize the company’s operations.
Pikup has taken the model of popular sites such as last.fm and discovered a way to fund artists based on how often their media is accessed by each individual, rather than relying on a one-off initial payment. Does this signal a shift towards fairer allocation of profit for artists?
Text and Image via Springwise
Music crowdfunding pops up in France
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The ‘anechoic chamber’. Can you bear Earth’s quietest place ?
April 9, 2012
They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.
The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.
It’s 99.99 per cent sound absorbent and holds the Guinness World Record for the world’s quietest place, but stay there too long and you may start hallucinating.
‘When it’s quiet, ears will adapt. The quieter the room, the more things you hear. You’ll hear your heart beating, sometimes you can hear your lungs, hear your stomach gurgling loudly.
‘In the anechoic chamber, you become the sound.’
Text via Daily Mail
Image via Nick Seaver
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Race Sounds – soothing sounds for car aficionados.
April 8, 2012
At this year’s Sebring 12 hours I brought along a high quality audio recorder to capture some of the glorious sounds that are never really properly captured for broadcast. Over the four days that I was there I recorded a few hours of audio that came out very nicely. There is no clipping in the original recordings and in editing to adjust the amplitude for playback on stereos and computers there is nearly no loss in quality. From the 5+ hours of original recordings I am releasing about 2 hours of the best samples. Some had to be cut for wind noise or other interference but what you hear on racesounds.com is pure unfiltered noise from this years race. I plan to take more recordings at other events this summer and continue to add to the collection. I will be recording at this years 24 Hours of Le Mans, two ALMS events – Virginia International Raceway and Baltimore – and this years Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The site will evolve over time but for now open it up and crank up your Hi Fi.
Via Strassenversion
Synapse Magazine
April 8, 2012
The complete archive of Synapse Magazine , a 1970s publication about the nascent electronic music scene.
Meet Titica – Africa’s first openly transgender music star
April 5, 2012
“African governments don’t want us thinking that “homosexuality” is within the realm of their “traditional values”. So apparently these leaders, even Nobel Peace Prize winning ones, use that as an excuse to justify the persecution and lack of protection for some of their most vulnerable citizens. Well, it seems that the Angolan government who currently seem to have their hands full (of money?) can’t be bothered to check whether or not popular Kudurista, Titica, fits within that value system… and we’re glad for that. Now, I don’t know the frame through which Angolans are seeing Titica. A little forum and youtube scrolling reveals a divided public (as always).”
Excerpt of a post by Boima Tucker from Africa is a Country Hail Kuduro!
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BRAIN PULSE MUSIC by Masaki Batoh
April 4, 2012
Masaki Batoh, former musician of the band Ghost and currently also an acupuncturist, recently released the album called Brain Pulse Music. Here, he experimented with his BPM Machine and used traditional Japanese ritual melodies and instrumentation to form a prayer/requiem for the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Fortunately, I read some of his wise insights thanks to Co.Design
“We survivors were mentally shattered like our dead victims.” He explains to Co.Design
Batoh wanted to articulate that devastation, but the worst experiences can be tough to articulate. Talking can require that you catalog each emotion, and how do you do that when your whole psyche is a mess? How do you share the truth of what you feel, if you have no idea what that truth is?
“Human beings lie, but their brain waves never lie,” writes Batoh. And with that mantra in mind, Batoh moved beyond words. He turned to a modified EEG, what he calls a Brain Pulse Machine, to measure the brain waves of earthquake victims and play them back as music. He then mixed these tracks with his own to create Brain Pulse Music, a memorial album to raise money for Japan’s orphans.
To get Masaki Batoh’s $699.99 Brain Pulse Music Machine go to Drag City.
Hear audio samples HERE
+++ Info about the history of Brainwave Music? Read: A Young Person’s Guide to Brainwave Music: Forty years of audio from the human EEG
Electronic music pioneer Alvin Lucier amplifies his own brain waves in “Music For Solo Performer”
Nicolas Collins electronics. 1965.
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Meet Gijs Gieskes
April 2, 2012Gijs Gieskes is a sonic artist/craftsman/circuit-bender/electrician/digi-magician/industrial designer/educator among other things. As you travel through his website, you will find how wonderfully generous and transparent he is about his process and work. Bellow you will find some audio visual samples of his work.
Acid-Machine
Test_Lab: Audio_Objects (2007); Photo by Jan Sprij
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Locus Sonus
March 28, 2012
Locus Sonus is a research group specialized in audio art. It is organized as a post graduate lab by the Art Schools of Aix en Provence (ESAA) and Bourges (ENSA) in France. We have a partnership with sociology lab CNRS, LAMES Aix en Provence (which is interested by the way practices relate to new technologies and are creating modifications in artistic production and the way that the audience reacts to these modifications). We currently continue collaborations with the CRESSON, architecture lab CNRS in Grenoble (sonic spaces research centre), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and other international partners.
Locus Sonus is concerned with the innovative and transdisciplinary nature of audio art forms, in the framework of networked sonic spaces, some of which are experimented and evaluated in a lab type context. An important factor is with the collective or multi-user aspects inherent to many emerging audio practices and which necessitate working as a group. The main goals define this research – audio in it’s relation to space and networked audio systems. Today our research is grouped under several main headings Sound and Distance, Field Spatialization, Networked Sonic Spaces, Audio Fluxes, Sonification, and Internet Auditoriums
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The Badgermin
March 27, 2012
Meet the Badgermin, a theremin built into a taxidermy badger. According to the makers:
What a great start to the year – this brand new instrument was finished just in time for a New Year’s Eve party in the beautiful Dorset countryside. A selection of talented musicians, none of whom had played a Badgermin before, treated us to a debut performance in the early hours of January 1st, with grand piano accompaniment.
The electronics are from a PAiA Theremax kit, with new 8mm diameter removable antennae. Please get in touch if you would like customized theremin.
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Communicating Bacteria – The normal flora project
March 25, 2012
“Communicating Bacteria” is a new collaboration between Anna Dumitriu, Dr Simon Park and Dr John Paul, which explores new research currently being undertaken in the field of bacterial communication through the development of an art installation that combines bioart, textiles and video projections.
Bacteria have intricate communication capabilities, for example: quorum sensing (voting on issues affecting the colony and signaling their presence to other bacteria); chemotactic signaling (detecting harmful or favorable substances in the environment); and plasmid exchange (e.g. for transfer of antibiotic resistance genes). This is now being investigated as a form of social intelligence as it is realized that these so called ‘simplest’ of life forms can work collectively, obtain information about their environment (and other cells) and use that information in a ‘meaningful’ way. Using signaling chemicals such as Homoserine Lactone, the bacteria pass on messages to nearby cells, which can be either part of their colony or other living cells (including eukaryotic and plant cells).
Dumitriu’s long-term artistic practice is focused around microbiology and collaborative practice – Communicating Bacteria builds strongly on Dumitriu’s earlier collaborative work. Dumitriu will work using this new area of research as a basis for the development of a body of new work that will include textile designs with dyes made from bacteria that change color dependent on the behavior and communication of bacteria, crochet patterns based on bacterial responses, interactive interventions that are modeled according to the behavior and communication across bacteria.
Text via Anna Dumitriu
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Making jelly music with the NOISY JELLY KIT
March 24, 2012
Note : This project is a fully working prototype made with Arduino and Max/Msp, there are absolute no sound editing in the video.
Noisy jelly is a game where the player has to cook and shape his own musical material, based on coloured jelly.
With this noisy chemistry lab, the gamer will create his own jelly with water and a few grams of agar powder. After added different color, the mix is then pour in the molds. 10 min later, the jelly shape can then be placed on the game board,and by touching the shape, the gamer will activate different sounds.
Technically, the game board is a capacitive sensor, and the variations of the shape and their salt concentration, the distance and the strength of the finger contact are detected and transform into an audio signal.
This object aims to demonstrate that electronic can have a new aesthetic, and be envisaged as a malleable material, which has to be manipulated and experimented.
Author: Raphaël Pluvinage and Marianne Cauvard
Picture set at flickr
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“unnamed soundsculpture” by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer / Kinect
March 22, 2012
Produced by onformative and chopchop the “unnamed soundsculpture” is a project by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer, building from the simple idea of creating a moving sand sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person.
For the work the team asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect) using Processing, in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud) in 3D Studio Max, so they were able to use the collected data throughout the further process.
Text and Images via Creative Aplications. Click HERE for more info.
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Kony 2013 The Album?
March 21, 2012
We just came upon this strange release by Jose Ph. Kony. We thought it was worth mentioning. Kony 2013 is tagged as: Noise pop, experimental, afro-glitch, dark lounge, microbeat, and saturated dronecore.
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